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"otton Mather 
Witchcraft 

TWO 

NOTICES OF 

MR UPHAM HIS REPLY 








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Cotton Mather 
Witchcraft 



TWO 

NOTICES OF 

MR UPHAM HIS REPLY 

A? 4 _ 




Boston: T R Marvin & Son 131 Congress Street 

London : Henry Stevens 4 Trafalgar Square 

May 1870 



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Till Cain's Club be taken out of Abel's hand, as well as 
out of Cain's, 'tis impossible to rescue the world from 
endless confusions. C. Mather 

The Christian religion brings us not into a temporal 
Canaan — it knows no designs, it has no weapons, but what 
are purely spiritual. C. Mather 

It will be safe to account the names, as well as the lives, 
of our neighbors. C. Mather 

We should be very tender in such relation, lest we wrong 
the reputation of the innocent by stories not enough inquired 
into. C. Mather 

I cannot indeed resist the conviction that he looked upon 
the occurrences in the Salem trials with secret pleasure, and 
would have been glad to have had them repeated in Boston. 

C. W. Upham 




3, 



I confess it is a lamentation— and it shall be for a lamen- 
tation — that so much false history is imposed upon the 
world. C. Mather 

How many excellent men, and more precious than the 
golden wedge of Ophir, have been strangely Sanbenitd*d 
by partial, prejudiced, passionate historians; and handed 
down to posterity in vile. characters. C. Mather 

It is not more certain, than shameful, that historians very 
commonly write as tools of a party. The motto to be in- 
scribed on them is Omnia pro Tempore^ Nihil pro Veri- 
tate. C. Mather 

Indeed Luther and Calvin, and some other buffeted heroes, 
have had their vindicators. But who will dare appear in 

the vindication of [Puritan ministers scandalized in 

English history ] or so much as say, ' Tis pity they are not 
vindicated ? Who is there ? Who so hardy or honest as 
to take the A thence Oxonienses of a Wood, and so take the 
poison out, that the books may be read with safety, and 
become a useful performance ? C. Mather 





Upham vs. Mather, 




Tt. Charles W. Upham's Reply to Mr. 
Poole's article in the North American 
Review for April last, has been lying 
on our desk for several months, and 
we have at last, with paibfal application, mastered 
this tangled mass of historical detail. The author, 
we think, has made a mistake in not bringing his 
statement into a narrower and more leadabie com- 
pass. His paper, if printed in the North American 
Review, would rake an entire number. We live in 
a busy age. Many persons interested in the dis- 
cussion will, having read the title page and 
skimmed over the surface, feel their utter inability 
to wade through the ninety -one pages of small type 
in double columns. Tne paper is heavy and mo- 



notonous in the extreme, and the writer never re- 
lieves the reader by laying aside the character of a 
special pleader for that of an impartial historian. 
His task is to write down the Mathers, and to sub- 
stantiate the hard assertions he has made against 
them in his previous writings. Some of his points 
we will endeavor to condense and illustrate. 

The subject of the first of his twenty chapters is 
"The Connection of the Mathers with the Super- 
stitions of their Time." Towards its close he 
sums up as follows: "My first position is (we 
abridge somewhat his redundant phraseology) that 
Increase and Cotton Mather are, particularly the lat- 
ter, justly chargeable with, and may be said to have 
brought about, the extraordinary outbreaks of 
fanaticism exhibited in the cases of the Goodwin 
children and of the afflicted children at Salem vil- 
lage." Here is the corner-stone of his argument, 
and we will inspect it for a moment. 

We need only consider the bearing of these 
charges upon the son, for Mr. Upham elsewhere 
admits that the father condemned and opposed the 
proceedings at Salem. We do not object to his 
connecting the Good win case with the Salem trials, 
for the younger Mather was as much responsible 
for the one as for the other. 



The Goodwin case occurred in 1688. Cotton 
Mather was then twenty -five years of age. It is in 
proof that he had no personal connection with the 
case till it had been the town talk for three months, 
and then he was invited by the father of the afflict- 
ed family to his house with the other ministers of 
the town. Mr. Mather, when he called, was so 
much a stranger that he required an introduction. 
These facts were first brought to light by Mr. 
Poole, to disprove the statement of Mr. Upham 
in his Lectures of 1831, that the Goodwin case "was 
brought about by Dr. Mather's management." In 
bis late "Keply" Mr. Upham does not pretend that 
he had any evidence to sustain this gross charge, 
and says that, in his History of 1867, "I carefully 
omitted the sentence, fearing that it might lead to 
misapprehension." Why misapprehension ? The 
fault of the sentence is not in ambiguity, but in its 
falsification of history. His History of 1867 is full 
of charges against Mr. Mather quite as gross, and 
having as little foundation in fact. We need not 
go beyond the paragraph which he thinks he has 
expurgated (vol. II.. p. 366) to find two examples, 
namely : "he repeatedly endeavored to get up 
cases ef the kind in Boston ;" and "he was secretly 
and cunningly endeavoring to renew them (the Sa- 
lem proceediogs) the next year in his own parish 
in Boston." It is singular that one who has the 



8 

jaistorical faculty so highly developed that be eas 
tell what a person who lived almost two centuries 
ago "was secretly and cunningly endeavoring to 
do," misapprehends so completely his public acts 
and avowed opinions. 

In answer to the charge that the Mathers, espe- 
cially the younger, brought about the Goodwin and 
Salem cases, we need only inquire what Cotton 
Mather had done, up to the year 1688, to bring 
about the extraordinary outbreak of fanaticism here 
alleged ? Holding, doubtless, the opinions common 
at that time on the subject of witchcraft and dia- 
bolical agency, he had written no book on the subject, 
and Mr. Upham has never undertaken to, and 
cannot show that he had preached a sermon, of 
had any opinions thereon. His corner-stone crum- 
bles at the first touch. 

We are well aware of a statement which has 
long been current in our histories, that Mr. 
Mather published his first work on Witchcraft hi 
1685, and we may here pause for a moment and 
examine it. 

"It was not," says Mr. Peabody, in his "Life of 
Cotton Mather," 1836, p. 241, "till Cotton Mather 
in 1685 published an account of several cases of 



witchcraft, with arguments to prove that they were 
no delusions, that such fears and fincies revived. 
The case of Goodwin's family took place sooo after, 
and this being published renewed the appetite for 
horrors, and prepared the way for the scenes ex- 
hibited at Salem." 

Mr B^rry, in his "History of Massachusetts," 
1856, vol. II , p. 31, says, "Cotton Mather pub- 
lished in 1685 an account of cases which had oc- 
curred in Ndw Eagland, with arguments to prove 
that they were the effects of familiarity with the 
devil." The same statement may be found in oth- 
er historical works, among which is that candid 
and excellent work, the "History of the Second 
Boston Church," p. 102. Mr. Upham speaks of 
himself (Reply, p. 20) as "a critical interpreter," 
and of his reviewer as "a careless, cursory reader." 
He therefore knows that Cotton Mather published 
no work on witchcraft in 1685, and yet he has al- 
lowed the statement to pass unchallenged these 
many years. More than this, he has perpetuated 
the misprint/mt of which the error originated^in 
his History of 1867, vol. II. p. 361. This date 
evidently made a strong impression on the mind of 
Mr. Peabody (than whom there never was a fairer, 
kindlier-hearted manj prejudicial to Mr. Mather, 
and it will make this impression on any thought- 



10 

ful man who accepts it as true. Bat it is not true ; 
and it was the duty of the "critical interpreter" of 
Salem Witchcrafc to have corrected the error in 
his later publications. 

The error in date we have described has evi- 
dently arisen from two sources — a misprint in the 
"Magnalia," of 1685 for 1689, the date ot Cotton Ma- 
ther's "Memorable Providences ;*' and a misconcep- 
tion of a statement of Gov. Hutchinson in "His- 
tory of Massachusetts," vol. II., p. 24, concerning 
another work printed in 1685, or more correctly 
1684. This last work was Increase Mather's "Re- 
markable Providences." Toe "Magnolia" was print- 
ed in England, and the author had no opportunity 
to revise the proofs as the work was passing 
through the press. A list of Mr. Mather's three 
hundred and eighty-three publications is appended 
to Samuel Mather's life of his father. The first 
title in the list, "The Call of the Gospel," is dated 
1686. An earlier book has recently been found, 
"Elegies on Collins," which was printed in 1685. 

It is alleged, secondly, that Mr. Mather was es- 
pecially chargeable for the Salem cases. It is not 
pretended that he had any personal intercourse, or 
even acquaintance, with the afflicted persons at Sa- 
lem Village; but that his "Memorable Providences," 



II 

printed in 1689, containing an account of the Good- 
win case and the sermons he preached on the occa- 
sion, was the cause of all the mischief. He pub- 
lished no other book on witchcraft till 1693, and no 
connection has been traced between this book and 
the origin of the Salem cases in 1692. Witch tri- 
als had been held in the colony, and the death pen- 
alty inflicted, for more than forty years. The In- 
dian servants of Mr. Parris, with whom the Salem 
troubles arose, brought their superstitions from the 
West Indian Islands. One or more Eng ish books 
on witchcraft, which were then very numerous, 
were in Mr. Parris's family, but no trace was found 
there of Mr. Mather's. This was an unfortunate 
circumstance; for the little manual would have 
taught the faoaily and the Salem authorities a safe 
and judicious practice in treating the subtile ene- 
my. Prayer and fasting were Mr. Mather's meth- 
od of dealing with evil spirits — not hanging. Mr. 
Upham in his "Reply," when the proof was 
brought home to him by Mr. Poole, admits that 
this was the import of the book. A spirit of kind- 
ness and charity towards persons afllicted and ac- 
cused pervades the volume from beginning to end. 
Samuel Willard and the other ministers of the 
town vouched for the facts and principles of the 
book in a commendatory preface. 



12 

With these f*cts staring him in the face — for Mr. 
Upham's equanimity is greatly ruffled at the inti- 
mation that some incidents and books relating to 
the subject may have escaped his observation— he 
asserts that Cotton Mather is justly chargeable 
with the chief responsibility of originating the 
Goodwin and Salem cases. We question wheth- 
er a more baseless accusation against a good man 
was ever made and repeated by a writer who had 
claims to a historical reputation. His mode of 
making charges, and his manipulation of evidence 
to sustain them, reminds one unpleasantly of the 
Salem method of trying alleged witches in 1692. 
It would hang all the eminent clergymen of the 
present day; and the more brilliant their talents, 
commanding their influence, and devoted rheir pie- 
ty, the sooner they would swing. They are respon- 
sible for all the crimes and outrages in the commu- 
nity ; for. if they had chosen, they might, with their 
great personal influence, have prevented them. 
This is the favorite noose which Mr. Upham al- 
ways has ready for Cotton Mather, and he jerks it 
often. Such was Mr. Mather's commanding posi- 
tion that he might, if he had chosen, have prevented 
Gov. Phips from appointing a special court to try 
the Salem cases; he might, by the same influence, 
have mitigated the rigors of the court, sheltered 
the accused, and stopped the trials. If Mr. Up- 



13 

ham's argument, as to the controlling influence Mr. 
Mither had over Gov. Pnip*, proves any thing, it 
proves that Mr. Mather through Phips, did, and is 
entitled to the credit of doing, the noble acts last 
named. 

Mr. Mather was less than thirty years of age, 
and never was in any official position. He was 
simply a Christian minister. His father, on the 
other hand, was the most eminentnnan in the Col- 
ony, President of Harvard College, a statesman as 
well as a minister. As a public -agent of the Col- 
ony, he. had resided for years near the Court at 
London, and had transacted the most difficult and 
complicated business within the range of states- 
manship. Through his nomination and influence 
the Governor and the entire Council received their 
appointments. We might naturally suppose that a 
person of such antecedents would have some influ- 
ence in the affairs oi State ; but Mr. Upham sees 
little of this. It is the son, the young preacher, 
who is the impersonation of the powers that be, 
both in Church and State. The most enthusiastic 
admirer of Cotton Mather, we believe, has never 
before given him such a commanding position at 
this early period of his life. Of Increase Mather 
he says in his "Reply," "1 had no peculiar interest 
in determining what his views were," and yet he 



couples him as accessory before the # act, with his 
son in bringing about the Goodwin and the Salem 
cases. Increase Mather, however, wro^e the most 
important book concerning witchcrafc which was 
prepared while the Salem trials were going on. No 
reader simply of Mr. Upham's Lectures and Histo- 
ry would ever ascertain the fact. 

Mr. Upbam's theory is, that no sooner had Gov. 
Phips landed in Boston, in May, 1692, than Cotton 
Mather met him, gave him exaggerated accounts 
of what had transpired at Salem, kept him away 
from other leading men, and brought him so much 
under the magic power of his own personal influ- 
ence that the Governor became his tool. Tne Gov- 
ernor's appointment of the Special Court to try the 
cases at Salem was, so far as its responsibility was 
concerned, Mr. Mather's act. For the present pur- 
pose of the argument we will accept this statement. 
Phip*, says Mr. Upham, was an illiterate person. 
Mr. Bancroft says he was a dull, headstrong, fee- 
ble-minded man, and in politics knew nothing of 
general principles. As usual, Mr. Bancroft takes 
his opinions at second-hand, and is wholly wrong. 
The letters of Pnips, which Mr. Upham prints, are 
very able ; but on our present theory we must sup- 
pose they were written for him by Mr. Mather, who 
was a noted letter- writer. Philip English and wife, 



*5 

who were arrested at Salem and imprisoned in Bos- 
ton, were, by the ministers of the town, stealthily 
sent off to New York for their personal safety, 
bearing a letter from Gov. Phips to Gov. Fletcher 
of New York, commending the fugitives to his 
hospitality and protection, and this they received. 
Afcer the excitement was over the exiles returned 
safe and sound. Honor again to Mr. Mather. Mr. 
Upham cannot sufficiently express his gratitude to 
Gov. Phips for stopping the executions at Salem 
in the autumn of 1692. It was a very creditable 
act, and it all redounds to the glory of Mr. Mather, 
who held the conscience and controlled the acts of 
the Governor ! No eulogist of Mr. Mather ever 
claimed so much for him as this. 

Mr. Upham discovers that his argument is prov- 
ing too much, and he attempts to hedge by assert- 
ing that a coolness had intervened between the 
Mathers and the Governor, and he knows the very 
moment it commenced. In evidence of this he 
states that at the next election ten anti-Matfeer 
men, including Elisha Cooke, displaced as many 
Mather men in the Council. This election did not 
take place till May, 1693, and the last execu ions 
were Sept. 22, 1692. The Council consisted of 
twenty-eight members, and the ten new members 
did not change the character of the Council. The 



i6 

impression is giveD that this was a personal matter 
whereas it was the political question of the old and 
the new charter. The Mathers, who were not in 
the government, were new-charter men. Elisha 
Cooke and his party were old-charter men. The 
new charter was now in full operation ; and it was 
the part of political sagacity to introduce a repre- 
sentation of the defeated party into the Council. 
Without claiming that Cotton Mather had any such 
influence over Phips as Mr. Upham alleges, it is 
clear that there was a warm friendship and respect 
existing between them, (which is evidence of 
Phips's intelligence and sagacity ) and that this bond 
was never sundered. Mr. Mather was the Govern- 
or's biographer, and no one can read his affection- 
ate eulogy in the Magnolia, without being im- 
pressed with this fact. 

The letter of Gov. Phips to the government was 
written Oct. 14, 1692, "at the moment/' says Mr. 
Upham, (how does he know this?) "when he Mad 
made up his mind to break loose from those who 
had led him to the hasty appointment of the 
Special Court." The structure of the sentence im- 
plies that these persons were the Mathers ; where- 
as Phips says that "he depended on the judgment 
of the coun" (or the persons composing the court, 
of which Stoughton was the headj in the witch- 



17 

craffc proceedings. This passage, again, Mr. Upbaist> 
refers to the Mathers : "I was grieved," says Phips, 
"to see that some who should have done their 
majesties and the Province better service, have so 
far taken counsel of passion as to desire the pre- 
cipitancy in these matters." The passage obvi- 
ously refers to Stoughton and the court, who were 
in the service of their majesties and the Province, 
which could not be said of the Mathers. Phips in 
no instance alludes to the Mathers or to the clergy 
as being in any way responsible for the proceed- 
ings. 

We have marked other points for examination, 
but our allotted space is filled. We cannot see 
that Mr. Upham has controverted any point in 
Mr. Poole's paper. In attempting to vindicate his 
own positions he has fallen into many historical 
errors, and has shown that his 4 treatment ©f Mr. 
Mather was wholly unfair, and nothing else than 
the persecution which he himself cod demns. 

Watchman and Reflector,. 
c 



From the result of my own continued researches, and the 
suggestion of others, I feel inclined to the opinion that no 
very considerable alterations will be made ; and that subse- 
quent editions will not impair the authority or value of the 
work as originally published in 1867. C. W. UpJiam, 1869 

He that can glory that in fourteen [forty?] years he hath 
not altered nor improved his conceptions of some things, 
shall not have me for his rival. C. Mather \ 1723: 





Cotton Mather, 




URING his life, and For a hundred years 
IS after his death, no name in the annals of 
the Province of Massachusetts, was 
held in more reverence than that of Cot- 
ton Mather, unless it he that of his father, Increase 
Mather. The son was a prodigy from his youth. 
He knew more languRges, wrote more books, col- 
lected more materials for history, and exerted a 
wider religious and political influence than any 
man who had lived in New England. During the 
greater part of his long professional life his publi- 
cations averaged one a month. His historical 
works form the connecting link between the first 
and fourth generations. He had a kind heart, a 
genial manner, and a burning zeal for the cause of 



22' 

evangelical religion. When he died, in February*, 
1728, his funeral, though he had never held a 
political office, was the largest and most impres- 
sive that had ever taken place in Boston. "The 
Lieutenant Governor, Council, and House of Rep- 
resentatives walked in the procession," says a 
contemporary account, " and then a large train of 
ministers, justices, merchants, scholars, and other 
principal inhabitants, both men and women. The 
streets were crowded with people, and the win* 
dows filled with sorrowful spectators all the way 
to the burying- place." Four funeral sermons, 
preached by the ministers of the town, were 
printed at the time. Two of these sermons were 
by Thomas Prince and Benjamin Colman, names 
of the highest historical reputation, and who inti- 
mately knew the man to whose memory they paid 
the most glowing and affectionate eulogy. Their 
texts were, "My father, my father! the chariots 
of Israel and the horsemen thereof." " And Enoch 
walked with God, and was not, for God took 
him." 

Within the last forty years an attempt has been 
made by historical writers, to reverse this contem- 
poraneous record, and to heap reproach upon his 



23 

name. This concerted hostility dates from the 
larger development of *« liberal Christianity " in 
Massachusetts. The first marked demonstration 
appeared in Mr. James Savage's notes to Governor 
Winthrop's Journal, printed in 1825. It is, some 
one has said, a matter of doubt whether Mr. Sav- 
age's chief object in this work was to annotate 
Winthrop or to abuse Cotton Mather. These 
strictures of Mr. Savage only touched upon his 
reputation as a historian. Soon after, Kev- Charles 
Went worth Upham, then a Unitarian clergyman 
of Salem, prepared a course of Lectures on the 
subject of Witchcraft, which he delivered in that 
town and the vicinity, and in 1831 printed them in 
a volume. Here appeared a new series of charges 
bearing upon the moral and religious character of 
Mr. Mather. He was accused of being the insti- 
gator, fomenter and conductor of the witchcraft 
prosecutions at Salem, 1692, — of delighting in 
scenes of blood, — of dishonesty and corruption. 
These views are found to-day in the text-books 
used in our public schools* 

On the publication of the Lectures in 1831, a 
writer in the Christian Register (Unitarian) chal- 
lenged these statements as being contrary to the 



24 

historical record of Mr. Mather's character. Mr. 
IFpham, in the Appendix of his second edition, 
printed in 1832, noticed the above criticism, and 
stated that it was a new view which he had him- 
self discovered from a study of the documents of 
that period. Before this time, he admits, "a. 
shadow of doubt had never been suggested re- 
specting Mr. Mather's moral and Christian charac- 
ter ;" but having found that he was "in reality 
dishonest and corrupt, a regard for truth and jus- 
tice compelled me to express my convictions." 
These accusations, brought out in 1831, were in- 
tensified in his " History of Salem Witchcraft," 
printed in 1867. 

An article on " Cotton Mather and Salem Witch- 
craft," appeared in the North American Review for 
April, 1869, in vindication of Mr. Mather; show- 
ing that Mr. Upham was either not familiar with, 
or had intentionally misrepresented the contempo- 
raneously printed literature on the subject, — that 
the contents of well-known manuscript collections 
had not been explored, — that he had suppressed 
the most important printed documents of the 
period, such as the " Advice of the Boston Minis- 
ters," of June 15,. 1692, which was drawn, up. by* 



25 

Cotton Mather, and " Cases of Conscience con- 
cerning Witchcraft," written by Increase Mather, 
at the request of the Boston ministers, while the 
Salem trials were in progress, and which flatly 
contradict the statements of Mr. Upham, — that he 
had perverted the obvious meaning of Mr. Mather's 
writings, — and that the authorities on which he 
depended, such as Robert Calefs book, were 
wholly unreliable. The writer of the review was 
Mr. William F. Poole, a critic well versed in New 
England history. 

Mr. TJpham's "Reply" to Mr. Poole's review, 
has appeared in the Historical Magazine, and both 
papers have been printed in a separate form. The 
question at issue is not simply the character of 
Mr. Mather, but that of all the New England cler- 
gy of that period. Mr. TJpham's " Reply " is un- 
necessarily long and inexcusably tedious. He 
introduces topics which have no relation to the 
points in issue, and his whole treatment of the 
subject is that of a partisan rather than an histo- 
rian. He fails, it seems to us, to establish the 
positions whinh he has set up in his previous 
works, or to answer the strictures of his opponent. 
The concessions he is obliged to make are fatal tG 

D 






26 

his case. His theory has been, that Mr. Mather 
was the chief instigator and conductor of the 
trials at Salem. ^Nlr. Poole produced the proof 
that Mr. Mather never attended one of the trials, 
either as prosecutor, witness or spectator. Mr. 
Upham admits this, and does not show why he 
did not mention it in his Lectures or History, for 
the fact is expressly stated in Mather's " Wonders 
of the Invisible World," and Calef's *« More Won- 
ders." Mr. Mather often went to Salem that 
summer, and we know that he was selected by the 
condemned persons, as their comforter and spir- 
itual adviser. Would these persons have chosen 
for such a duty, the man who had brought them 
into their wretched condition ? Mr. Upham en- 
deavors, by his logic, to show that Mr. Mather, 
if not at any of the trials, was present at the 
preliminary examinations. He has examined 
the records, and finds almost every body else 
there, but not a trace of Mr. Mather. Unless 
he can show that the alleged chief conspirator 
was present on one or more of these occasions, 
he has no case. 

His argument is this : Susannah Sheldon, one of 
the • » afflicted children," testified on the 9 th of May* 



27 

that there appeared to her a " shining white man." 
Mercy Lewis, on the 1st of April, stated that she 
had seen a " white spirit/' The spirits usually 
testified to were of quite another color. Some- 
body must have told these girls about a white 
spirit. That person must have been Mr. Mather ; 
and to do this he must have been present at the 
examinations, stood by their side, and put the idea 
in their ears. But why lay this charge especially 
upon Mr. Mather ? Because nobody else knew 
about a white spirit ; and he got the idea, so Mr. 
Upham asserts, from a -Swedish book in his pos- 
session, which he quoted in his " Wonders of 
the Invisible World." A theory must be in a 
desperate condition to need this sort of con- 
firmation. Perhaps in following out this inci- 
dent, we can as well illustrate Mr. Upham's 
method, as by giving brief specimens of many 
others we have marked. 

The girls were testifying concerning what ap- 
peared to be a good spirit ; and they evidently 
borrowed the imagery of the New Testament, 
where such spirits are uniformly represented as 
clothed in white. Mercy Lewis saw her white 
spirit "in a glorious place which had no candles 



28 

nor sun, yet was full of light and brightness, and 
where they sung the song in Revelation, v. 9/' 
For a clergyman to fall into such a mistake as 
this, and use it as historical evidence to convict 
another clergyman of a dreadful charge, must be 
classed among the curiosities of the clerical pro- 
fession. 

If Mr. Upham had been familiar even with witch 
lore, a white spirit would not have struck him 
with surprise. The books are filled with them. 
Increase Mather, in his Remarkable Providences 
of 1684, has a chapter on white spectres, and ad- 
vises his readers to have nothing to do with them, 
for they are nothing else than the Devil in dis- 
guise. The service which the Swedish book is 
made to play in the argument, is very comical. 
Increase Mather was probably the owner of the 
book, for he used it in making his Remarkable 
Providences, before Cotton Mather had reached his 
majority. Mr. Upham will find it quoted on page 
132 of the London reprint of 1856. "Will he claim 
that Increase Mather stood near the girls at the 
examinations, and whispered in their ears about a 
white spirit ? 



2 9 

It is fortunate that Mr. Upham did not live in 
Salem in 1692, with his present ideas of criminal 
and historical evidence. There would have been 
a dearth of ministers in the Province for the next 
generation. His methods would hang both the 
law and the prophets. 

We never remember to have read a paper with 
so many historical errors, so much illogical and 
inconsequential reasoning, and such bald perver- 
sions of the plain meaning of contemporaneous 
documents. No one can read it without feeling an 
increased respect for Mr. Mather, and appreci- 
ating the spirit which animates his detractor. , 

Mr. Abner C. Goodell, jr., the neighbor and 
friend of Mr. Upham, has given a complimentary 
notice of the " Reply " in the Genealogical Regis- 
ter for April. He says : " As the writer in the 
Edinburgh Review y for July, 1868, has said of the 
History of Salem Witchcraft, — ■ no more accurate 
piece of history has been written* — so say we 
[A. C. G., Jr.] of this [Mr. Upham's] paper on 
Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather." The force 
of the compliment is impaired by the fact, that no 
writer on the subject ever made so many mistakes 



30 

as this same Edinburgh Reviewer. Besides re* 
peating Mr. Upham's errors he manufactured them 
by wholesale for himself. He did not know that 
Salem Village was a different locality from Salem 
town ; he made the date of the settlement 1620, 
" under a charter granted by James I. to the Gov- 
ernor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in 
New England ; " and he makes a dreadful muddle 
of New England names and events. How a 
writer, who has not learned the alphabet of our 
local history, is capable of forming so authorita- 
tive an opinion as that expressed above, is quite 
as inexplicable as that Mr. Goodell should 
have used the extract in the manner 
he has, unless he intended to 
give his friend, what Calef 
calls an " ambidex- 
ter" endorsement. 
Christian Era 




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027 280 026 



